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Toshiba Now Mass Producing Speedy 15nm NAND Flash Memory Chips

Paul Lilly
Apr 25, 2014

Page 1 of 10

Toshiba wins race to 15nm in NAND flash memory field

What a relief it must be for OCZ to now be owned by Toshiba. Prior to the acquisition, OCZ had to fret about its supply of NAND flash memory chips, and that's not a concern for Toshiba, which makes its own. On top of that, Toshiba continues to advance the technology. To wit,
Toshiba just announced it developed the world's first 15nm processor technology
, which it's applying to 2-bit-per-cell 128-gigabit (16 gigabytes) NAND flash memories.

Mass production of these new chips is getting under way at Toshiba's Fab 5 Yokkaichi Operations in place of second generation 19nm parts. Toshiba's also working on a second stage at its Fab 5 plant, which will also focus on 15nm memory.

The 15nm NAND flash memory chips are smaller, sport improved circuitry, and achieve the same write speeds as Toshiba's 19nm parts, though the data rate is boosted to 533 megabits per second, which is 1.3 times faster. That speed increase is largely due to a new high-speed interface.

These faster chips will make their way into smartphones, tablets, and solid state drives (SSDs),
Toshiba says
.

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